For the first time in four years, Fargason did not receive a March pink slip. She looks forward to completing the school year without the distraction or anxiety of potential unemployment.

“It’s really nice that I just get to focus on teaching, and I’m not stressed out during the day,” said Fargason, who teaches third grade at Fay Elementary School in City Heights. “There is no cloud hanging over our school this year.”

School districts in San Diego County and throughout California have issued dramatically fewer layoff warnings to teachers this year. It’s one of the first real signs of the impact of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 tax hike since it was approved by California voters in November.

Just days after the state’s March 15 deadline to issue pink slips, the first official tally of San Diego County’s 42 districts shows that at least 136 full-time educators received layoff warnings, according to the California Teachers Association. That’s a sharp contrast to the 2,200 notices issued in the county last year.

Statewide, the CTA reports that just more than 3,000 educators received pinks slips this year, down from 20,000 last year. The state’s two largest districts in San Diego and Los Angeles did not issue any pink slips to teachers this year.

“It’s just such a relief,” said Bill Freeman, who represents 7,000 teachers as president of the San Diego Education Association. “However, there still has to be some more concrete changes to public education funding in California.”

In recent years, pink slip season has become an annual yet unwelcome tradition in recent years for teachers and parents. State law requires districts to notify teachers, counselors school librarians and other educators with teaching credentials by March 15 that they might be laid off — long before the governor releases a revised budget proposal in May.

A report issued last year by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office criticized the teacher layoff process as expensive and counterintuitive. Roughly 75 percent of layoff warnings issued in the state are typically canceled after districts spend an average of $706 per pink slip on hearings and necessary paperwork. The report recommended realigning the teacher layoff deadlines to with the state budget calendar. State Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, is pushing a bill to move the preliminary layoff deadline from March to June and the final deadline from May to August.

Even though most layoff notices are rescinded, they instill anxiety and uncertainty among teachers, parents and students. Pink slips often prompt months of emotional rallies — and media coverage — that often pits teachers against administrators. Since layoffs are seniority-based, schools that serve the neediest children — typically the campuses with the least-experienced faculties — tend to get hit the hardest with pink slips that sometimes threaten to replace entire staffs.

Last year at Fay Elementary, Fargason was among 28 teachers (out of 29 overall) to receive a pink slip.

“The kids kind of get ripped off because they are not getting teachers who are 100 percent focused,” Fargason said. “For schools like ours that could lose a whole school of teachers — and their relationships with students and families — that is just really hard.”